Three Fun Things: January 12, 2025

Brutalism in 3D, a Movie About Love and Grief, and Sparkling Water on Tap in Seattle

1. Drive My Car; streaming on multiple services

Recently, I found myself complaining—about an author I really want to like—that I would be a hundred times less likely to throw his books across the room if he would stop being so fucking weird about women.

By the end of this book—which had some really cool ideas in it, and the kind of unresolved ending that tends to make people, though not me, really mad—I was anticipating the introduction of each new female character with dread. “Here comes her breasts, boobing boobily,” I’d mutter, and indeed: The newly introduced woman (or, disturbingly, prepubescent girl) would have breasts that were lush and ripe, or taut and firm, or the cause of a “massive hard-on” that the protagonist, naturally, just “couldn’t help.” In the book I just read, a man commits murder to protect a cat, but an unambiguous rape scene is written, sympathetically, from the perspective of the rapist.

Then, a few weeks later, I watched a movie that was based on the work of the same author—one my household had put off watching because it was three hours long. Knowing who wrote the source material made me wince at some scenes—the dead woman who propels the action of the male protagonist, who we first see naked in a flashback, can only get ideas for screenplays after sex with men— but I found these flaws less glaring in the film, which—I’ve confirmed—is more humane to its female characters than the story on which it’s based.

The book I read over the holidays was “Kafka By the Shore,” by Haruki Marukami, and the movie was “Drive My Car.”

The story, in brief: A playwright and former actor, Yūsuke, who’s grieving over the death of his wife, Oto, gets hired to direct a multilingual adaptation of “Uncle Vanya” at an artists’ residency in Hiroshima. While there, Yūsuke learns that he won’t be allowed to drive his beloved red Saab because of an unnamed mishap that happened during a previous residency. Instead, he’ll be driven around by Misaki, a young, working-class woman who is fleeing her troubled life in a village on the other end of Japan. During their drives, Yūsuke listens to Oto’s “Uncle Vanya” recordings and recites the dialogue out loud. To play the grizzled, embittered Vanya, Yūsuke chooses a young man, Koji, who he knows was having an affair with his wife. An incident of unexpected violence propels Yūsuke into the title role—a role he hasn’t played since Oto was alive, when she recorded the dialogue onto cassettes so he could memorize it in his car.

This is a movie of tense, quiet set pieces, not direct confrontations, and it’s filled with moments of uncomfortable intimacy. In one indelible scene, Yūsuke and Koji are discussing Oto, who was always struck with screenwriting inspiration just after sex. Stuck in a kind of trance state, she told the stories she came up with to both men, who would recount them to her the following day, when she would no longer remember what she’d said (That’s right—she was literally dickmatized.) In this scene, which takes place in the back of Yūsuke’s car, the camera lingers on each man’s face for a long, long time, settling on Koji as he describes the final chapter of one of Oto’s stories, which Yūsuke hasn’t hard. In this moment, neither man is right or wrong, and neither owns Oto’s memory or the right to mourn her with more intensity. They’re both the imagined main character in their own version of Oto’s story.

Misaki (whose breasts Murakami indeed described in the short story “Drive My Car”; SIGH) reveals her own grief in halting, reluctant intervals, but the bond that eventually develops between her and Yusuke allows both of them to move on, in an ending I found ambiguous—has Misaki managed to dupe her wealthy, somewhat sheltered patron, or have both these unhappy people actually moved on?

2. The Sparkling Water Fountain at Macrina’s Aloha Café

I’ve been dreaming for many years about a fountain that delivers sparkling water when you press the button. (Plain water is for chumps. You heard me.) And while science has not yet produced the water fountain of my dreams, Macrina Bakery on Capitol Hill has something that may be even better: A tap that, when you press it, produces a refreshing pour of beautiful, bubbly H20. Now, I’m not suggesting you go to Macrina and only use this magical tap—if nothing else, do yourself a favor and buy literally any of their gorgeous crusty loaves to take home or treat yourself to a gorgeous tart or crisp, perfectly laminated pastry. But after you’ve done that, mosey on over to the water taps in the back, and enjoy a compostable cup or two of water in its finest, most delicious form—fizzy, ice-cold, and fresh from the tap.

Macrina Aloha Café, 746 19th Avenue East Seattle, WA 98112

3. Brutal Poland (Zupagrafika)

My fondness for Brutalism started out, like so many true passions, with disgust: How anyone love an architectural style whose most famous Seattle example was the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a hideous double-decker freeway that used to run along the downtown waterfront? Disgust turned into curiosity, which turned into fascination with this photogenic—yes, photogenic!—20th century style. Eventually, I got interested in all types of concrete buildings, from the spomoniks of the former Yugoslavia to the massive modular apartment blocks you can see all over Central Europe. (Also the King County Administration Building. Fight me.)

In addition to brief descriptions and photo essays about each of the nine buildings featured in this book (three of which I’ve seen in person), the book includes die-cut models of each building, complete with graffiti, satellite dishes, and window A/C units for an authentic experience of post-Soviet realism. The book series, from the publisher Zupagrafika, also includes Brutal East I and II, Brutal London, and Brutal Britain, plus many other titles that I’m planning to add to my collection.